Assessments (e.g., exams) are used in many parts of society to measure knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors, e.g., in order to certify people for job roles and qualifications or grant licenses to work or perform tasks. For instance, educational institutions may use exams to validate work, knowledge, and skills to give educational qualifications. As another example, during the recruitment or promotion processes, an organization may test how a candidate behaves under certain circumstances to see if the candidate will fit in with the culture. As yet another example, companies including Information Technology (IT) and other high-tech companies may issue certifications to people who can use or maintain products, or who are skilled with products. Organizations may use internal exams to confirm that people are competent to do jobs where failure has a high risk (e.g., financial services and trading, operators of power stations and transport operators, etc.). Government agencies may provide licenses-to-work based on exam results for many professional trades such as doctors, nurses, crane operators, etc., and for licenses to drive.
Some of these exams may be delivered by paper and/or remotely by computer, with a candidate using, e.g., a workstation or other device to answer questions. Part of the process of conducting an exam may be to minimize cheating. Common forms of cheating may include, for example, identity fraud (e.g., where someone other than the candidate claims to be the candidate), use of cheating materials (e.g., having access to books, the internet, or other resources in a closed-book exam), prompting another person giving the right answer (e.g., someone sitting by the candidate or via telephone), and copying answers (e.g., looking at how others taking the exams at the same time are answering questions and using the same answers).
There are many variants of cheating and with exams where little, inadequate, or no supervision is provided to the candidate, cheating may be a problem where society may not fully trust the integrity of the certifications, qualifications and licenses that the exams provide.
Lower stakes assessments may also be used to check understanding after e-learning or after other on-screen learning for instance during regulatory compliance competency checking, where employees are required to undergo training to teach regulations, processes and procedures and need to pay attention both during the learning and during the assessment.